


The Sacrifice

by Anonymous



Category: Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, I'm so sorry, M/M, and my mind ran with it then made it much worse, but i've done my best to be thorough with the comfort, i was thinking about that interview, lots of hurt i'm afraid, where tom said ethan would never fight benji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:02:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23390641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “Listen Benji, unless one of us kills the other they’ll shoot us both,” Ethan says urgently, hefting the ridiculous gladiator-style spear and shield their sadistic captors had thrust on him, a match set to Benji’s shield and sword. “And if we hesitate or try to rig the outcome they’ll know and kill us just the same. So we’re going to have to fight to the death for real, fight with all we’ve got, and,” he hesitates, struggling to get the words out even though he is lying through his teeth, “whoever proves the best fighter and kills the other will live. It’s that or we both die.”Benji’s face turns deadly white, and fear overwhelms his eyes. Benji knows that Ethan is the superior fighter, and Ethan is sure that in that moment Benji is convinced he is about to die. Ethan should be relieved—Benji has to believe this, he’d never agree to let Ethan passively die for him—but he feels sick. If Benji truly believes that Ethan would take his life to save his own hide, even if the only alternative was to die together, then Ethan has already failed him.
Relationships: Benji Dunn/Ethan Hunt
Comments: 35
Kudos: 94
Collections: Anonymous





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So you know that one interview where Tom Cruise says that Ethan would never fight Benji? Well I was thinking about that interview and considering a story that used that concept, then my mind came up with something far worse and I wrote that instead.
> 
> My sincere apologies.

“Listen Benji, unless one of us kills the other they’ll shoot us both,” Ethan says urgently, hefting the ridiculous gladiator-style spear and shield their sadistic captors had thrust on him, a match set to Benji’s shield and sword. “And if we hesitate or try to rig the outcome they’ll know and kill us just the same. So we’re going to have to fight to the death for real, fight with all we’ve got, and,” he hesitates, struggling to get the words out even though he is lying through his teeth, “whoever proves the best fighter and kills the other will live. It’s that or we both die.”

Benji’s face turns deadly white, and fear overwhelms his eyes. Benji knows that Ethan is the superior fighter, and Ethan is sure that in that moment Benji is convinced he is about to die. Ethan should be relieved—Benji has to believe this, he’d never agree to let Ethan passively die for him—but he feels sick. If Benji truly believes that Ethan would take his life to save his own hide, even if the only alternative was to die together, then Ethan has already failed him. Perhaps he deserves the painful death he’s about to ensure he gets.

Abruptly he’s snapped out of his thoughts by the voice of the announcer calling them to the arena. Time’s up. And he can’t even say anything to Benji, nothing of love or comfort, nothing that might make Benji hesitate in the crucial moment.

Yet just before they jog into the arena Benji stops, places a staying hand on Ethan’s shoulder, and turns Ethan to face him. “Ethan, before we go in there—” Ethan avoids his gaze, afraid of what Benji might see if he looks directly into his eyes, “Ethan, I know how you are, so I need you to listen—” he’s too weak, he looks, and he curses himself for it “— _it’s not your fault_.” Then Benji turns and runs out into the arena.

* * *

As Ethan kicks himself into gear and runs after him, he’s terrified for a moment of what Benji will do next. But Benji charges at him the moment the announcer calls for the start, and he fights hard, proving himself surprisingly adept with a sword.

Ethan feels almost dizzy with relief. Benji’s skill will make it far easier for Ethan to do what he has to—to fake a mistake at a crucial moment, to allow Benji’s blade to fatally strike him without it looking intentional on his part. Christ, Benji is doing so well that he might not even need Ethan's cooperation to end this the right way, he thinks with a flash of pride for his friend’s skill. 

But as they carry they on, feint and parry, Ethan’s heart sinks. Benji is putting on a good show, so good that it deceived even him at first, but he isn’t taking advantage of the openings Ethan is giving him, and indeed is skillfully redirecting his strikes when Ethan attempts to take him by surprise and make himself vulnerable at the last second. Benji must just be buying time, then, keeping up the show but unwilling to go through with finishing it.

Granted, it’s hardly a surprise. The hope of Benji willingly ending him had been slim at best. Still he delays changing tactics, hoping Benji will realize that there is no other way, will strike out even if it's only in a moment’s crisis of fear.

Then the announcer is speaking, goading, suggesting that they are only playacting the fight. Ethan curses himself for the hundredth time that day. He’s waited too long to change tactics, and now he will have to resort to the strategy he most wanted to avoid.

Because the watchers need to believe this. They have to be certain that the fight was real, or else even if— _when_ —he gets himself impaled on Benji’s sword they’ll destroy Benji anyway, punish him for not playing their twisted game.

So the next time he spots an opening he lunges forward, makes contact, feels flesh—feels Benji—tear under the force he’s applied to the spear. He’s unable to finish the job properly— _too weak, again too fucking weak_ —he jerks away before the strike is fully complete, stagers back and stares helplessly at the blood dripping down the arm with which Benji is holding his shield, takes in the shocked pain in Benji’s eyes.

And that’s it, Ethan has to finish this _now_. Since he's got to die he wants very much to make an end of it at once so he can stop seeing the way Benji’s face is twisted with pain Ethan caused willingly, stop replaying the sensation of Benji’s flesh giving way under his thrust.

He’ll have to be more involved than he’d hoped; have to not only provide an opening but lean into the strike so that Benji won’t have time to redirect. It is riskier that way. The watchers are more likely to realize what he’s done. But at least Benji will know. He’ll know that he can’t blame himself; that Ethan was always going to ensure this outcome; that he wouldn’t have it any other way.

So Ethan hefts his spear one last time and circles Benji carefully, positioning them so the cameras are least likely to get a clear picture. Then, before he can make a move Benji has hefted his sword, lifted his shield with a grunt of pain, and is charging at him, teeth bared, face disfigured with such rage that Ethan feels a surge of hope that the wound has driven him to strike in earnest.

But Benji’s sagging shield arm is proof that he has already made too many decisions on the basis of empty hope, and this time he is leaving nothing to chance. He takes his stance, spear grasped firmly, shield raised as if to block the strike, and prepares to make his move: to pretend a feint to dodge around Benji’s shield and land a hit with his spear; to instead stumble and drop his shield enough to leave his neck exposed to the sword’s bite; to use the imbalance to lean into that bite with as much of his weight as he can manage without arousing suspicion.

Tensed and ready as Benji closes the gap between them, Ethan is so focused on getting this right that Benji is nearly on top of him before he realizes that something is off. Benji’s shield has dropped too low—perhaps only the natural result of the struggle to keep it up with his wounded arm?—and his sword is still raised too high for how close he is.

Before Ethan can process these details, attach meaning to them and adjust accordingly, Benji drops his shield.

With a strangled cry—no point now in concealment—Ethan desperately tries to jerk the spear to the side, back, away, but he’s too late, far too late, succeeding only in widening the spear’s gash as Benji’s momentum drives it in and through his stomach.

Blind with panic, Ethan is still yanking the spear out, away, as if getting it out fast enough might undo the damage, make it as if it had never happened.

In reality he succeeds only in gashing deeper into Benji’s ragged organs as he tears out the spear, leaving the wound open to bleed freely at both sides when the spear is out and dropped to ground like a brand. And Ethan _knew_ that’s what happens when you withdrew a weapon without proper precautions, he _knows_ these things, but its too late—a second time, too late—and there’s nothing left to do but catch Benji as he falls, lowering him tenderly to the ground mere moments before Ethan’s strength gives way.

Yet even as he sags he places his hands over the gaping hole in Benji, leaning so all his limp weight contributes to putting pressure on the wound, because what is the point of his surviving an instant past murdering his dearest companion if not to make every effort to save him, however hopeless?

And he’s yelling—screaming—begging Benji to tell him why he did it, what he was thinking, as if understanding could somehow allow him to undo it, transfer the gaping hole to its proper place in his own body.

Then, “shh, shh,” he hears from Benji, and he quiets at once, because if Benji wishes to speak he will hear anything—everything—from him. Then through horrifically gurgling breaths, with a face somehow tender through the twisting of pain and fear, Benji whispers, “Better … like this.”

And that’s the worst thing he could have said, really, when if there was nothing Ethan could give to save Benji he would have sacrificed anything just to have Benji curse him, spit at him, tell him it’s all his fault and he wishes he was lying in agony instead—to have Benji know that his life is too precious to be stolen without the gnashing of teeth and the severest punishment of the perpetrator; to have him do anything but battle through his agony to comfort his murderer.

Then Benji is speaking again, urgently now: “Go on … won’t wait … forever—” and he shifts slightly, hand nudging the sword that had fallen close to his side.

And Ethan understands. He knows the rules. Cut off the head of the opponent, dead or alive, or there was no victory and both lives are forfeit.

Much later, though eventual circumstances would not allow him to regret it for an instant, Ethan thinks that the one truly selfish thing he did that day was refuse what seemed sure to be Benji’s final request: for Ethan to end his pain and allow Benji to die believing that his sacrifice had not been in vain. It would have been a lie, of course—even if the watchers were sadistic enough to leave him alive when clearly he had broken the rules and intended to let his opponent live, even if somehow he was released when he never would have found it in himself to try to escape any richly deserved punishment they chose to inflict—even then the torture that would be every breath during which he survived murdering the man he adores would never have amounted to anything worth calling a life. Still, it would have been a kind lie.

Yet looking back, even with all his proficiency at guilt, Ethan could never really blame himself for failing in that moment. Could never believe that he had any control over himself then, any ability to act differently than he did.

What he does is to spring suddenly to his feet, choking on air, and yell in the direction of each camera, scream at them to send help, can’t they see he needs help, Benji is dying and he _can’t_ die, they have to help, if they don’t he’ll destroy them, tear them to pieces—

There is no real hope in his cries, but hopelessness has never kept him from action before, it certainly won’t now, not when it matters more than it ever has. And if—when—the watchers do nothing to aid him, at least he might spur on their killing fire, ending Benji’s pain and granting him the undeserved mercy of oblivion.

Then past the thunder of his own voice and pounding blood he realizes that Benji is speaking again—no, screaming—and when Ethan jerks around he finds Benji is crying out his name, face twisted in terror and agony as he actually tries to lift himself up and drag the sword with him.

In an instant Ethan is back at his side, again applying pressure to the wound with one hand while he does everything he can to still Benji’s terrible writhing with the other. And he’s distantly aware that he’s sobbing, saying “I’m sorry I love you I’m sorry” over and over and again, but his only concrete thought is _why don’t they end it please end it please please please_ —

And then the heavy iron gate rolls open, and Luther runs inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more, I apologize. I will say this—these two have got a rough time ahead of them, but Benji will live and they will be happy in the end. 
> 
> I might even write a follow-up chapter to tell you about it. We shall see.
> 
> Oh also I suck at titles, so if you come up with a good one for this that you're willing to share please do mention it in the comments. If I end up using it I'll credit you in the notes at the beginning :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! It’s taken me ages to update this story, because if I was going to follow these boys through the healing process I was going to do it properly, and it soon became clear that after what I’d put them through they’d need far longer than one short chapter.
> 
> Besides that, because I’m bad at finishing larger projects I resolved that unless I successfully drafted the remainder of the story I would let it rest with the semi-conclusion of Chapter 1. Now that I have the security of having drafted the remaining 5 chapters, I intend to polish and post updates about once a week.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

It's a miracle that Benji reaches the hospital alive. But with Luther's quick action in racing him to the car, Brandt's crazed driving, and Jane staunching the wound and keeping up a steady stream of words to link Benji to consciousness he does make it, somehow.

No thanks to Ethan. He'd have happily hacked off a limb if it would increase Benji's chances by the merest fraction, but the others don't trust him to be useful in his current state.

They're right not to. They shouldn't.

* * *

Ethan has no idea how long Benji is in surgery, his mind overtaken with images and sensations that ought to belong to his darkest nightmares, not living sense memory. He's vaguely aware of comforting hands and soft voices, feels even more distantly that he ought not to be receiving them, but he can't drag himself into reality enough to quite recall why.

It's only when a doctor enters and speaks Benji's name that he's able to engage, on his feet at once asking questions and memorizing every word but clinging to the crucial details: "alive—unstable—don't know if he'll pull through—visitors allowed."

That final detail has scarcely been mentioned before he's moving, and someone must have named the room number because in his next moment of awareness he's standing in a doorway and _Benji_ is there, and his face is still twisted in pain but his chest rises and falls steadily and he's alive, alive hours after Ethan gave up all hope of his making it through another few minutes.

He might have stood watching Benji breathe until he collapsed, but then Luther is taking his arm and leading him gently towards the bed. He pulls away at that; grabs a chair and drags it into the furthest corner, sits and draws his knees into his chest, and waits.

* * *

The first three days Luther, Brandt, and Jane take turns holding Benji's hand and speaking to him in a gentle, steady stream. Ethan is unutterably grateful to them for doing all they can to tie Benji to his body, to life. Occasionally they try to coax Ethan to the bedside, but he never responds. He longs to take his turn, to be Benji's anchor, but he doesn't deserve to tenderly speak and touch, not now or ever again. Even if that weren't the case, he's terrified that awareness of his presence might shock the vestiges of Benji's consciousness back into pain and terror, will cause him to shrink away from the life that allowed it.

He doesn't deserve even to be here, to watch Benji's still-steady breathing, count every heartbeat on the monitor, have his friends always position themselves on the opposite side of the bed so they don't obscure his view. But it can't be helped. He doesn't think he is physically capable of leaving this room, and until Benji's safe he has to be here in case he can do something, _anything_.

His friends must understand something of this, because for all their anxious glances in his direction, they never suggest that he leave.

* * *

On the second day Benji cries out in his unconscious state, jerking his bandaged arm as if in sudden, surprised pain.

Ethan is on his feet in an instant, but Jane had been at Benji's side and is already leaning over, stilling him, smoothing out the tight lines on his forehead with gentle fingers, speaking soothing words. There is nothing Ethan can offer that Jane isn't already giving better, certainly not when he has no illusions about who was wounding Benji in the recesses of his mind.

It's only then that it occurs to Ethan that no one had even tried to have the doctors look after him, heal his wounds. They hadn't tried because there had been no need. He had wounded Benji deliberately and pointlessly, then gouged a gaping, ragged hole in him, while Benji left him with scarcely a bruise.

He bites hard on the inside of his lip until his teeth cut through flesh and meet. Blood fills his mouth, but because he has scarcely opened it since entering this room there is no effort required to hide it from Luther, the current watcher.

A pitiful, self-indulgent penance.

* * *

Ethan isn't sure if he's slept. There's little to distinguish the sleeping hellscape of thought and image from the waking one. Still, he loathes himself a little more every time he suspects that he's woken up from sleep.

He murdered Benji, and now he can't even stay conscious to watch over him.

* * *

On the fourth day there is an emergency at the IMF office, and for a few hours neither Brandt, Luther, nor Jane are able to stay by Benji's side. Brandt is the one keeping watch when they are all called away and realize they will have to leave Ethan alone with Benji.

"Go to him," Brandt says as he leaves, and it's not a suggestion, it's a command, and a terse one at that.

Slowly, as if he might bring on the apocalypse with every step, Ethen approaches the bedside and sits.

For some time he just stares. This is the closest he's been since stepping into the hospital. Then Benji begins to twitch and mumble incoherently, and with trembling fingers Ethan reaches out and encloses Benji's hand in his own, mummers gentle nonsense about the warmth of the sun and the comfort of home, with the occasional spattering of words like "Fortnite" and "xbox", which he doesn't really understand but knows make Benji happy.

And he's petrified of what the effect might be, that Benji will—but he watches in wonder as the tension drains from Benji's body, the murmuring quiets, and the tight lines on Benji's face loosen.

He isn't aware of Luther's presence until he steps into his line of sight across the bed. He flinches away from Benji and clenches his mouth shut as if caught in a transgression, and slinks back to his corner.

* * *

After that day the others continue to take shifts, and Ethan continues to crouch in the corner when any of them are there. But they no longer hesitate to leave Ethan alone with Benji for stretches of time, and when there is no better companion for him Ethan no longer hesitates to take his place by Benji's side, to touch and to mummer. Still, his hands never fail to shake as he reaches out.

He hates himself for the way he aches for those moments when he should wish for better bedfellows—for anyone else—for Benji's sake. But he can't seem to help it. If—no when, when, _when—_ Benji wakes, Ethan will never touch or speak to him again. However undeserving, he cannot help but cling to the slipping time he has.

* * *

As he murmurs in an endless stream, Ethan speaks often of how deeply Benji is loved by his friends, by his family, by strangers who catch his smile in passing. In the abstract he'll recount endless lists of what is good and beautiful in him, of his heroic deeds and daily kindnesses. He'll tell him that he never deserved this, never deserved any pain, that it should have happened to someone else. He needs Benji to know how fundamentally he deserves to live, how deeply he is loved, how much joy he'll bring upon his return.

But he never speaks of his own regrets, or his own aching love.

Regardless of intention, such declarations always are received by their object along with some sense of pressure to respond—to reciprocate or forgive. And Ethan will not allow Benji to feel weighed down by what he cannot give; should not give.

* * *

Benji dies on Ethan's watch. He's stroking Benji's hand softly, murmuring internet-gleaned details about his family—it felt like a violation to look them up, but he knows Benji loves his family, that for him they are a reason to come back—when the chest his eyes have scarcely left for an instant stills, the beeping of the heart monitor going without transition from a steady, grounding rhythm to silence.

Ethan is on his feet in an instant, violently pumping Benji's chest first with one hand as he presses the call button, then with both, screaming for help as he does. The nurse comes quickly, Ethan forcing air from his lungs into Benji's only once before she has assed the situation and grabbed the defibrillator.

She sends a shock through Benji once, twice, a third time, his body jerking wildly and jarring his wounds. Then the monitor beeps once, twice, a third time, and holds steady.

Later that day, Ethan learns that he cracked three of Benji's ribs while pounding on his heart.

* * *

After two weeks, the doctor gathers the four companions in the room and tells them that Benji isn't going to pull through. She recommends terminating his life support. She's looking at Ethan.

Later, when he's able to think, Ethan understands that Luther must have manipulated the records to make him appear as the primary contact. He doesn't think now. He shakes his head—a refusal.

Selfishness again. He can't help it. Losing all hope has never been enough to make him stop fighting.

* * *

He would be sure he is dreaming if he had been capable of good dreams these days. Hallucination seems more likely. A cowardly escape into insanity, perhaps. But according to the best perception of reality he can muster, Benji's steady, shallow breathing has changed. Deepened. He's making sounds—not coherent, but not the aimless muttering that occasionally overtakes him. His face is screwed not in pain but in concentration, and the disconnected syllables seem laced with effort and intent.

Luther tears his eyes from Benji and looks across the room at Ethan, gestures at him to come. Ethan ignores him. But then Benji's hand moves—not a twitch, but a slow curl into a loose fist and a release—and Ethan breaks.

"Benji," he breathes, loud enough to carry, "Come back Benji. Please."

Benji's eyes flutter open.

In perhaps the hardest task he has ever undertaken, Ethan stands and slips silently to the door, not looking back. But even as his first foot exits the room, Benji's disconnected syllables coalesce into a word: “Eth-Ethan—"

He freezes—struggles—and walks out the door.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit longer. Hope you enjoy!

Ethan can't bear to go far. He paces the hospital lobby until he hears Luther's footsteps echoing down the hallway, then darts outside and hides until Luther disappears. He resumes his pacing outside, eyes glued to his phone so he doesn't miss an update for a fraction of a second, until he begins to be afraid of falling asleep on his feet. He's tempted to find a place to hide for the night, but he'll need to have his ringer and text alert on full volume to ensure there's nothing he sleeps through, and he can't afford to be arrested for loitering and have his freedom of movement cut off.

So he finds the nearest lodging—a cheap hotel—borrows a car to test the distance, and finds that while navigating the roads takes up to five minutes he can consistently run between the buildings in three. Even then he can't bring himself to place the trek down the hallway and the door of his room between himself and Benji's hospital bed, so he fights off the heaviness and lingers in the lobby until the staff informs him it is closed for the night.

And so at last he stumbles into his room and collapses onto the bed, too dead to resist, the softened terror no longer enough to substitute for the energy gleaned from rest. He sleeps deeply for the first time since it happened, woken every half hour by the bi-hourly text updates he made Luther promise to send, which are followed quickly by the alarms he set to go off every 30 minutes in case Luther ever misses an update. He never does.

Ethan wakes up at 7:58 am, before the text alert sounds, and finds that his body is no longer demanding immediate sleep, and his mind is clearer and more alert than it has been since … since.

He's already staring at the phone screen when it dings, and the 8:00 am update appears: _Condition stable. Improving by the hour._ Ethan clutches the phone to his heart and curls in on himself, tight. He tries to keep his hold steady, but a broken whine escapes, and his control breaks.

For the first time, he weeps.

* * *

Initially his friends seem content just sending regular updates, provided he sends the occasional response. He supposes they are too relieved he's finally left the hospital room to be eager to call him back. But on the third day, the content of the texts begin to shift.

**Jane**

_How are you Ethan? Can I come by?_

**Ethan**

_No. I'm sorry._

He knows his friends. The first visits might just be to check in, make sure he's eating, but soon enough they'll be trying to drag him back to the hospital, trying to tell him it's not his fault that he skewered—

Better not to go down that path.

**Brandt**

_so … you coming back anytime this millennia?_

**Ethan**

_No._

Luther's message is the hardest.

**Luther**

_He misses you._

**Ethan**

_He shouldn't. He'll realize soon._

One response to each. After that, he will only answer updates on Benji's wellbeing.

Or at least, that was the idea. They badger him with concerned messages, of course, and on the fifth day he spots Brandt approaching the hotel. Interesting choice of comforter, but probably a wise one. His concern would communicate as anger instead of sympathy, and they must have realized how poorly he would receive sympathy just now.

When Brandt steps inside, Ethan slips out the window. He'll call the hotel to cancel his reservation later.

That evening, he sends a group text to the three of them:

**Ethan**

_Please respect what I said. Forcing yourselves on me won't help._

**Luther**

_You're right. I'm sorry, Ethan._

**Brandt**

_asshole. i won't do it again_

**Jane**

_Fine, but unless you start answering our texts about how you're doing, we'll stop sending updates._

**Brandt**

_^_

_what she said_

Ethan sighs. His wellbeing is irrelevant, and he wishes they'd drop it. Still, it's a small enough price to pay.

He sends the texts. They keep telling him to come back, to visit, but they don't threaten to withdraw information. He's grateful.

* * *

The worst is when Benji begins writing.

**Benji**

_hi_

_howre you?_

_im fine. promise. better every day_

_thanks for not chopping my head off btw. i owe you_

Ethan almost replies. It's cutting nonsense and he _needs_ Benji to understand that he can't just—he needs to know how important his life is. That he can't just fucking forgive—can’t fucking try to comfort—

The phone rings. Benji's number. Ethan covers his ears and doesn't breathe until the ringing stops. Nor does he breathe for some time following, trying desperately to displace the pain in his chest.

The texts continue to trickle in over the days that follow.

**Benji**

_how’re you?_

_*_

_i miss you_

*

_ugh, hospital food sucks_

_and that’s coming from someone who lives on frozen meals and bagel bites haha_

_*_

_do you cook? i’ve never asked_

_*_

_stood up today! making progress already!_

_i did a lot of healing in the coma, so i skipped the worst pain lol_

_*_

_did you sleep enough while i was frittering away time in the coma? hope you did_

_pretty sure you didn’t_

_*_

_am i annoying you?_

_just want you to know i’m good. bec i know you’re probably super worried_

_that sounds arrogant lol. but you always want to save everyone, and you’ve got a phd in guilt, so_

_*_

_i still miss you_

_*_

_wish you’d visit_

*

_no pressure of course_

_*_

_wouldn't mind if you’d answer a text though haha_

_sorry, shouldn't pressure you_

_i know you’re going through a lot_

_take as long as you need_

Ethan takes some relief in the fact that every ounce of comfort Benji tries to offer is a deeper twist of the knife. As it should be. He even wonders briefly if Benji knows it, possibly intends it. But that's too much to hope for. He doesn't believe it for a second.

Ethan only responds to Benji’s messages once.

**Benji**

_ethan, i need you_

**Ethan**

_what do you need_

**Benji**

_just you_

**Ethan**

_No you don’t._

**Benji**

_i’m sorry_

_i didn’t mean_

_not your problem_

Every message Benji sends hurts worse than anything has since he stepped out of the hospital room. Ethan wishes he could erase them from his memory. He rereads them obsessively.

The end comes just two weeks after Benji began texting.

**Benji**

_ill leave you alone_

_sorry_

_but—one thing—remember what I told you?_

_it hasn’t changed. please try to believe me_

_It’s not your fault._

As it turns out, absence proves a sharper sting than torturing presence.

* * *

Another two weeks pass before the phone rings, Luther's name appearing on the screen.

It's the first time he's tried calling, and Ethan snatches the phone, heart thudding.

"Is something wrong? How's Benji?"

The voice that answers is not Luther's.

"Ethan, I don't want—“

Ethan hangs up, and adds "what did Benji not want?" to questions that will keep him at night and never find an answer.

Benji texts immediately.

**Benji**

_shit im sorry_

Ethan could scream. Even through absence he is hurting Benji, making him take on guilt that is Ethan's and Ethan's alone. If he thought he had any chance of convincing Benji of the truth, of helping him see why he should never think fondly of him again—but it's no good. If he leaves Benji alone there is some chance he'll understand in time. If he tries to convince him, Benji will only grow stubborn.

Silence is the best he can offer, to expedite Benji towards forgetfulness.

* * *

Benji is discharged from the hospital a month and five days after he wakes. According to Jane, Luther, and Brandt, he's doing well. Still in pain. There will always be pain. The legacy Ethan left him.

But at least he's safe.

Ethan tails Benji home. It feels wrong, like the action of a possessive stalker. But he just needs to be sure Benji gets there safely, needs to _see_ that he's home, and then he'll never do this again. Not unless Benji is in active danger.

He watches Benji limp into the house, a hand pressed over his stomach. It's the first time Ethan has seen him since leaving the hospital. He looks worse than Ethan had hoped. Even though he knows how long wounds like that take to heal, even though it’s a miracle he's walking at all. He'd hoped.

Benji disappears inside.

His phone buzzes.

**Luther**

_You could just come in, you know._

Ethan drives away.

* * *

Things don’t change much. Ethan still worries about unexpected complications, how much pain Benji is in, and if he’s eating well. The others still keep him updated, and periodically ask if they can come visit. He still refuses to see them, and tries to make up for it by answering their questions about his well-being and sending the occasional picture to prove he’s taking care of himself.

And he’s not deceiving them. He is taking care of himself. While he has forfeited the right to be with Benji or work alongside him, in their circles it’s never certain that he won’t someday receive a call that Benji is in danger. He tries not to think about it. But if that call ever comes, his body and his skills have to be intact so he has every chance of saving him. He can’t fail him again.

That’s the key reason he won’t be returning to field work, with its long absences and limited communication. Besides, he’s no longer sure he’d do any good.

Of course, there is the day he hears Luther’s step approaching the door of his apartment. He can recognize the gait of any of his team members as easily as their voices, but Luther probably could have disguised it, were he so inclined. He makes no attempt, for which Ethan is grateful. For that reason he assumes Luther knocked instead—or at the very least before—opting to pick the lock. Not that he can say for certain. He’s out the window before Luther reaches the door.

**Luther**

_I’m sorry._

**Ethan**

_I understand. I’m sorry I can’t._

**Luther**

_I understand._

* * *

The first real event occurs some months later, when Benji’s face appears outside his third story window. 

He’d of course heard the sounds of someone scaling the building, had his gun in hand before they passed the first floor, waiting to see whether he’d need to defend himself or some other occupant of the building. He’d noted vaguely that the climbing sounded clumsy and slow—perhaps the climber was carrying something heavy? For … some reason? Well, whatever the case, the sounds were clearly coming towards him; if they continued in this path the stranger would appear at the window at any moment. Ethan leveled his gun …

And that’s how, the first time Ethan sets eyes on Benji in nearly half a year, he’s pointing a gun at his face.

Ethan jerks the gun violently aside, barely preventing himself from dropping it outright, raking his eyes about Benji’s face with an irrational terror that he might have blown a hole in it, despite the gun never going off. Benji grins at him.

Then Ethan is setting the gun on the counter with trembling hands and running to open the window, because Benji shouldn’t be here, _can’t_ be here, but he’s three stories up with a wound that must still be causing severe pain—

As soon as the window opens Ethan stagers back as far as he dares—which isn’t far, because if Benji slips he has to be able to catch him. He should be closer, should be helping him climb in and supporting him, but he can’t touch, to touch is to hurt—

Benji hauls himself in, face carefully still after his greeting smile, and half-climbs half-falls over the windowsill. At once he collapses to a seated position on the floor, curling his legs in tight towards his torso and dropping his head to his knees so his face is hidden—but not before Ethan glimpses it contorting in pain.

“Benji…” he tries, but it comes out strangled and whispered. Almost at once Benji raises his head, face once again clear and smiling, if tentative. Still, his expression wavers as he watches Ethan take trembling steps backward.

“Sorry about the fuss, but according to Luther you’d be gone before I reached the door if I came the usual way.”

“Luther let you—”

“No no, he doesn’t know I’m here. Don’t worry, he’s as overprotective as even _you_ could ask for.”

Ethan strikes the far wall and presses himself against it.

Benji winces. “Ethan I’m sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t have come, and I don’t mean to push myself on you, but I’ve been worried the only reason you’re staying away is …”

Benji trails off as Ethan shakes his head violently, because _Benji_ shouldn’t apologize, can’t apologize.

Benji's eyes grow wide and sad, all real or feigned cheeriness dropping away. "If you tell me to go, I will."

Ethan tries to move, tries to speak, needs to explain that Benji shouldn't move—has moved far too much—but they can't be in the same room—Ethan will go for help—

But those are more words than he can manage, and the door is too far away when he can't seem to move at all, so instead he only presses harder against the wall as if with enough force he might melt right through.

As if the universe is determined to make this as tortuous as possible, tears are now welling in Benji's eyes, and he's crying because of Ethan—or perhaps it's worse, perhaps he's crying _for_ him—and then Benji is talking again: "I just wanted to save you, Ethan. I couldn't let you die, not for me. I just needed—but I should have known what it would do to you. And I'm sorry, I'm _so sorry—_ “

" _NO!_ " Ethan bursts out, the quick release of his voice emerging with the volume and weight of dammed up emotion, and Benji flinches as if frightened, frightened by _him_ , "Benji, I'm sorry please, please don't apologize, you shouldn’t—you've done nothing, I—Benji I never meant to. Everything I said that day was a ruse—there was a never a second when I considered …" And now he's doing what he'd promised himself never to do, not even _five whole minutes_ and he's apologizing, making excuses, practically begging Benji to understand and forgive, but he can't seem to interrupt the flow—

"Ethan," Benji interrupts flatly, a touch of amusement creeping into his voice and actually rolling his eyes, "I knew _that_ before we entered the arena, dingus."

In spite of himself, Ethan feels the vice of shame that has gripped him without variation loosen the smallest fraction. At least—despite what he'd thought entering the ring that day, despite everything—he had never failed to be a person Benji trusted to care for him. Well, to try.

“Good,” Ethan says, and then, before he can stop himself, “I’m sorry.”

Benji smiles, his face softening further with relief. “S’okay.”

The vice clamps back down. “No, it isn’t.”

“Ethan, it _is_.”

“ _Why?_ ” Too loud, again.

“I did it, not you.”

Again, so very softly, “Why?”

“I—” Benji hesitates, worries his bottom lip, peers at Ethan uncertainly, “because I love you.”

Just like that, Ethan understands. And he’s moving, saying, “Stay here, I’ll call Luther to come for you, don’t move, don’t hurt yourself—”

Then he’s out the door, dialing Luther’s number, and running.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was by far the hardest—I'm sure at least 50% of the time I spent on this fic was used working on this chapter. I simply couldn't find a way to either do without it or keep it without breaking the flow of the story.
> 
> Still, even if I'm afraid it's a bit dull, I worked hard on this chapter and am proud of it.
> 
> I hope that, if nothing else, it serves its function.

As Ethan races out the door and sprints down the hallway he’s dialing Luther’s number, then talking far too quickly, telling him that Benji is in his apartment and needs to be collected immediately, no he can’t do it himself, not now, please Luther—

With a promise extracted, he finds himself on the ground beneath his third-story window.

Through the open window, he hears weeping.

Luther takes far too long to arrive. Which is to say he arrives in less than 15 minutes, but by that time Ethan is sitting on the ground, curled tightly in on himself, hands clutching his hair, exerting all his willpower not to yank it out in handfuls.

But then Luther is there, and Ethan clings to every sound, listens to Luther’s firm but gentle murmurs, transforms noise into image and understands that Luther is lifting Benji into his arms, carrying him bodily despite Benji’s weak protests. Listens as Benji’s sobs increase in volume, become more violent, yet somehow less empty. Listens until the car engine ignites, moves, and fades into the distance. Knows that he will never hear another sound from Benji. Knows the divide that must cut between them will have to be yet deeper than he had envisioned. ****

Because now, Ethan understands.

* * *

He returns to his apartment once, just a few hours later, before they can guess he's disappeared. Granted, given his isolation, ordinary friends might have taken weeks to realize he was gone. But … well.

As-is, Ethan half expects Jane to be waiting in the room to pummel him for making Benji cry. But he slips in and out without opposition, carrying with him the few items he cannot bear to leave: the encoded letters Julia has sent him since her ‘death,’ a potted cacti that for all its resilience would soon shrivel without care, and the jacket Benji had lent him over two years ago and always found some excuse for not taking back whenever Ethan tried to return it.

He’d been funny about that. Insistent. Sweet. It had been nonsensical, and despite himself Ethan had caught himself wondering—hoping, even—

_Because I love you_

Ethan pushes the words away, but clutches the jacket closer.

He doesn't bring any other clothes, nor any shoes or accessories—they would only serve to make him easier to spot. And he has no doubt his friends will look, for a time.

But he has always been skilled at disappearing.

* * *

In his new life, Ethan never stays in one place longer than two or three nights, leaping between cheap hostels, Airbnbs, and the occasional abandoned safe house. Sometimes when he suspects his friends are closing in he’ll check into a hotel under a pseudonym he knows they'll recognize, then hike for miles and spend the night outside.

When he goes out it is only in disguise, and he speaks as little as possible. He still messages his friends regularly, which is a risk, but his need to know is no less urgent than before. Besides, right or wrong, his friends care for him, and he can't bring himself to disappear on them altogether.

Of course they ask where he's gone at first, but they drop the question after a few silences on his part. Perhaps they're afraid that if they push he'll cut off contact entirely. Or perhaps they hope that if they ignore the issue he'll be less likely to notice their attempts to follow him.

Little fear of that when he feels them closing in on him every few weeks. He even spots Jane once.

It would be far easier to evade them if he were willing to go beyond a 50 mile radius of Benji’s apartment. But he can’t quite bring himself to do it. He might still be needed one day. And if he is, he _has_ to be there.

* * *

**Jane**

_Benji won't be returning to field work._

**Ethan**

_Choice or mandate?_

**Jane**

_Both._

Ethan stares at Jane's messages for a long time. He should be overwhelmed with shame. Okay, in all fairness, he is, but that's nothing new. The novel feeling is the flood of relief. Benji is safe. He won't be returning to the field, returning alone without Ethan by his side, won't be putting his life on the cusp every time he receives an assignment.

And, met with an equal wall of guilt though it is, he can't push away the cyclical thought: _I did that. I didn't kill him, and now he'll be safe._

* * *

He couldn't have said when his internal landscape began to shift. Certainly his newly-established external patterns don’t vary: _move, never stay put, disguise, stay in shape (just in case), don't make eye contact, move, always move_.

But all the same, something is shifting.

The images of Benji's eyes opening in the hospital, grinning outside his three-story window, sitting in his apartment hurting but _alive, alive, alive_ play over and again in his mind. And slowly, slowly, his mind begins to accept the torn puncture in Benji's stomach, the blood coating his hands, are of the past. Have been survived. And Benji, _alive_ , is the present reality.

As that blessed truth at last begins to take hold, the cyclical memory of his failures begins to be interspersed with "Benji knew I would never intentionally hurt him," and "Benji is safe, he's hurting but he’s safe," and "We're alive, he chose to save me and he lived and we are alive."

Of course it had been his fault, he wasn't delusional enough to deny that. He hadn't been fast enough, smart enough, skilled enough. By far most unforgivably, he'd underestimated Benji. Underestimated his courage, his loyalty, his skill.

Perhaps it had been wishful thinking. Groundless hope that when it came to the point Benji would choose his own life over the mission or his teammates

Regardless of the cause, Ethan had called himself a leader, had loved Benji for years, and still failed to estimate him at his full worth.

All the same, once given an opening the IMF’s intensive psychological training begins at last to assert itself: “You are not all-powerful." "Mistakes will happen." "You were not the origin of the threat. You were not the origin of the pain.”

It would be a far stretch to say he's forgiven himself. But _Benji is alive, Benji is safe_ , and there is a world in which he could see himself returning, in time, if by some miracle he was still wanted.

Except, he understands now. He's never been good at accepting his fallibility when it cost the lives or wellbeing of others, but he’d kept trying anyway because being fallible doesn’t mean he can't help. Trouble is, his fallibility isn't the issue here.

The issue is that Benji loves him.

That Benji would run on a spear to save him.

Ethan may not be a danger to Benji, but when Ethan is near, Benji is a danger to himself.

* * *

As Ethan's mind and body slowly accept that they are no longer in crisis, he begins to feel restless. He doesn't miss the field, exactly. But a psyche adjusted (in however disordered a manner) to hanging off planes and periodically if temporarily dying, the relative peace of flitting from one location to the next without threat of bodily harm to himself or anyone else registers as a signal that something is _off_ , that he’s _missing something_.

Along with the restlessness, he begins to feel the old guilt—the knowledge that people are dying, and if he was out there, he could save some of them—the guilt that tore him from Julia. But it's not the same, not really. He left Julia believing she would be safer and happier without him, knowing that being near her was to risk her being discovered and targeted. The same is true of Benji, but Ethan killed him. And without public marriage documents marking Benji as the most effective means of destroying Ethan, his danger isn’t increased by Ethan being in the general vicinity. So his primary duty now is to be present if he is ever needed. He can't make up for what he had done, but he can do what is right. He can be there.

* * *

He does see Benji once, despite his efforts. Later he can’t say whether Benji caught up with him or was in the same town by happenstance. He only knows that one moment he is walking down a sidewalk on his way from the bus stop to his next hideaway, and the next _Benji_ has turned the corner and is walking towards him.

Ethan is in disguise, of course. If he’d kept moving, altered his gait, not drawn attention, he might have slipped past. But the fact is, disguises are recommended for avoiding recognition by targets who have likely never seen one’s face in person, not by one’s closest friends who have been manically trailing one for months. In addition, IMF protocol suggests that when trying not to be recognized, it is generally advisable to avoid freezing in place and gaping at one’s target.

And so, things being as they are, Benji’s face scarcely has time to register confusion at the rigid figure who seems intent on staring into his soul before his eyes widen and he croaks out: “Ethan?”

As Ethan runs—the only reaction to Benji's voice he finds possible these days—he hopes desperately that Benji isn’t stupid enough to try to run after him and aggravate his wounds.

He isn’t optimistic.

* * *

**Ethan**

_How is he?_

**Brandt**

_not fucking stellar_

**Ethan**

_what happened_

_brandt_

_please_

**Brandt**

_hey, it’s okay_

_he’s fine_

_claims he saw you today_ ****

_tried to run after you, like an idiot_

**Ethan**

_Fuck_

_I’m so sorry. Did it hurt him?_

**Brandt**

_of course it fucking hurt him_

_he misses you like hell_

_we all do_

**Ethan**

_No. Did the running hurt._

**Brandt**

_i mean yeah. running isn’t ever going to be a funtime activity for him_

**Ethan**

_I’m so sorry._

**Brandt**

_wish you’d come back._

**Ethan**

_I can’t_

**Brandt**

_bullshit_

* * *

Ethan's friends are infuriatingly, heartwarmingly persistent in their search. For far longer than Ethan had predicted the search wanes only when one or more of them is sent off on a mission, and resumes full-force upon their return. But even they can't maintain that level of pursuit alongside the intensity of their jobs indefinitely. And Benji—well, Benji had to realize Ethan isn’t worth it eventually.

So at last, after five months of a relentless chase, he feels their pursuit begin to drop off steadily. After six months, he at last felt safe to slow his endless movement.

He permits himself the luxury staying in each new base for a whole week, and every Wednesday he travels to visit his favorite coffee shop that he’s discovered in all his wanderings. The interior captures the ambiance of a forest cabin, with tin mugs and sturdy furniture and the smell of pine. It feels both homey and secure.

It’s nice, having a point of constant return after months of relentless movement. And because he always wears the same disguise on those visits, they recognize him there. He even gets to know the baristas a little, and whenever one of them leaves for a new job they are sure to tell him and say goodbye. That’s nice too. 

He’s started making an effort to have conversations in general, too. Always little affairs—an exchange with the woman bagging his groceries at the store, or the young couple walking their dog. Ethan guides the conversations carefully, keeping the attention and the questions directed away from him. It’s a scant antidote to loneliness, excluding himself from the picture even while conversing, walking away again, again, again, not infrequently from people he could imagine himself becoming friends with. Maybe someday. 

But though it isn’t enough, it is ... good. As his movement lessens and he allows himself these few scant ties to the world he's been racing through without ever touching, the rhythms of his body and mind begin to painstakingly adjust to the strange slow pace and low stakes of his new world. It’s no longer so impossible to settle into leisure reading for an hour or more, or to take long walks, and the terrible guilt of what his brain relentlessly interprets as wasted time gradually recedes from soul-deep to only bone-deep.

His therapist helps.

* * *

Ethan had always been in favor of therapy, theoretically speaking. He’d encouraged his teammates to take full advantage of the IMF’s in-house therapists, and he was fully aware that his own baggage was in dire need of professional sorting. Trouble was, therapy had a way of bringing certain well-buried emotions to the surface, imbalancing certain base assumptions. Old coping mechanisms had to be dismantled in the process of developing new ones, and in the interim there was. An unsteadiness. An unsteadiness he couldn’t afford to risk arising on a day when he was needed.

So he put it off. 

Wondered when he would shove down one too many fearful losses and it would all burst out, and he would fall apart.

But it’s different these days, now that he’s in for the long haul, now that there aren’t weekly explosions that distract him from his interiority even as they layer on the trauma. He’d best learn how to live with himself.

He has to have online sessions, of course, and that’s dangerous. Trackable. So he hadn’t started right away, had waited for two months until Luther was sent out on assignment and the sum total of his friends’ tech savviness was temporarily cut in half. It then took another month of dithering and skipping from one disastrous therapist to the next, but at last he found one he liked, and he began to give this therapy business an earnest go.

There are challenges, of course, what with the majority of the traumatic experiences he desperately needs to process being top secret. It also doesn’t help that his flight response kicks in hard whenever she skirts the topic of working to improve his sense of self-worth and believing himself ‘worthy’ of care.

But he is honest as he can be, choosing silence over lies, and in her turn his therapist doesn’t push, doesn’t rush him through the long periods when he cannot find any words at all, and indulges his need for solutions by offering concrete and practical tips for “increasing his capacity for stillness and riding the waves of frightening emotion and traumatic memory.”

It helps. He’ll even, sometimes, sit outside and watch the birds and simply allow his mind to wander. It’s terrifying, at first. He’s spent so much of his life convinced that if his thoughts and memories ever catch up to him he’ll be drowned. Indeed, not infrequently when he attempts this exercise he finds himself struggling to breathe in the face of the oncoming swells, then stands and attempts to outrun them in the most literal sense, pushing his body until the burn in his lungs and ache in his legs force him out of his mind. 

But, sometimes, he stands his ground. Even against swelling horrors he’d run so far from he’d nearly forgotten their haunting existence. Those days, he doesn’t fight as his mind delves into the darkness, lets the swell pummel him and focuses on just trying to breathe and then—it passes. And every time he survives the crashing surf of his interiority he finds a little more hope that he’ll survive next time too, and the next. That—perhaps—he doesn’t have to hide from himself to go on living.

He even begins, if as of yet in only a theoretical sense, to understand what his therapist means when she talks about ‘making friends’ with his darkest thoughts and memories and emotions. Treating them with respect and sympathy instead of fleeing and fighting, or even merely surviving.

There are a few waves he never tries to face, of course. However unable he is to escape the branded images of the arena, the blurred days in the hospital, he never stops doing everything in his power to keep them at bay. He’s survived them this long only by running, and he knows with certainty that facing them would be more than he can take.

And however often he fiercely reminds himself of those four words— _because I love you_ —he does so only as a reminder of why he can never go back, of why his presence is an inherent danger to Benji. To the best of his poor ability he refuses to consider what they mean to the part of him that spent so many years hoping Benji might say them, if Ethan ever had the courage to ask.

Nevertheless, on rare, golden occasions, as he sits and feels the soft breeze, when he releases his mind it seeks out pleasant scenes. Memories of Jack and Luther and Julia and Jane that were joyous and bright, however tinged with sorrow now. Delight in the variances of the humans passing by that isn’t overwhelmed by his sense of separateness. Even, now and again, flashes of a long-buried hope: not the hope of happiness, which died in the instant he failed to keep Benji off his spear, but hope of peace, and perhaps even something resembling contentment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There it is, folks! In the next chapter there will be actual tangible external progress to reflect the internal progress.
> 
> I might even break my schedule and post the next chapter tomorrow, since I have the day off. No promises, though ;)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks, guess who's gonna have an honest-to-goodness real-life conversation this chapter??

Ethan whistles softly as he approaches the Airbnb that is this week’s hideaway. He’d never been able to whistle a tune before, but lately he’s been practicing on his walks. In his estimation, he’s beginning to get rather good at it.

When he goes to unlock the door and finds one of the extra safety measures he’s temporarily installed deactivated, his whistling cuts off in the middle of a bar. He winces and makes a mental note not to let his growing peace translate into complacency. 

With an effort he resumes his whistling, though it emerges less steadily now, only to halt again when he steps through the door and is hit with an intense wave of sense memory. He closes his eyes as he reaches behind himself to close the door and vividly pictures Benji standing before him, all but hearing his voice and smelling his particular scent. 

This isn’t a new phenomena—it used to happen with Julia too, after she left, prompted by some smell or memory or phrase that pulled him back into a crystal moment. He’d learned then to sit with the moments when they came, holding tightly to the nearest approximation he can have to closeness with lost loved ones.

Just now the sensation is stronger than it has ever been, and he sinks into it so deeply that it takes several moments to realize that the quiet sound accompanying the rise and fall of Benji's chest in his mind's eye is not coming from inside his head.

Ethan spins towards the door, and two things strike him, both gentle and inconsequential in substance, but in effect propelling him instantly into a blind white panic:

First a figure slides into his eyesight—a beloved figure he has done everything in his power never to see again—and then the trembling voice that belongs to it says tentatively, hopefully: “Hi Ethan."

Ethan stumbles back, unable to process through the static in his mind, knowing only that this is all wrong, that Benji _can’t be here,_ that the most important thing in the world is his safety and his safety means _not with me_.

“Hey, Ethan, it’s alright,” Benji says, voice terribly soft and terribly kind, though it trembles. “Ethan—it’s just me.”

But that’s just it—that’s the whole problem—all this time and Benji still doesn’t understand—

Benji steps forward, and Ethan backs further away. Benji stills, looking lost and frightened.

_Frightened because of me_ , Ethan thinks, and grabs onto the thought, steadying himself a little with certainty of what he has to do: _get away._

The door is the only exit—how the _fuck_ had he let himself grow careless enough to book a room with only one exit?—and Benji is standing too close to the door, he can’t get past—

Ethan closes his eyes, keeping alert to any noise of movement from Benji. He breathes deeply, trying to remember how he’s learned to draw calm from his breath these past months. _You can do this,_ he tells himself, _you can do this_.

Ethan opens his eyes and says, “Benji.”

“Yeah,” Benji whispers, eyes widening.

“Benji, I—” Ethan steps forward.

Slowly, Benji matches the movement.

“Please,” Ethan whispers, shuffling forward just an inch or two more. Benji’s movement is still slow and careful, but this time he takes two steps, covering ground.

“It’s okay Ethan, there’s no hurry, we can sit down, take it slow.” Benji steps forward again, hand lifting tentatively.

Ethan’s eyes dart between Benji and the door, measuring the distance.

The flicker of his eyes is quick, would be scarcely noticeable to most, but Benji’s eyes narrow. Another moment and he’ll realize, Ethan will lose the element of surprise—

He runs.

He’s at a severe disadvantage, he’s nearly twice as far from the door as Benji and has to dart around, but Benji seems to panic, to freeze. He’s going to make it.

Then, from the corner of his eye, he sees Benji raise a fist, lunge forward, and swing.

_Oh_. Well, if that’s what he came for. That’s fair.

Ethan stills.

Benji’s eyes widen and he redirects the strike, stumbling with the unused momentum.

“Benji?” Ethan asks, confused, wanting to tell him that if he stopped out of misplaced guilt it’s alright, Benji can do what he wants. But before Ethan can recalibrate Benji has darted to the door, pressing himself against it, eyes wide with fear.

The searing panic is back at once, because _that’s his only way out, he has to get out_ , but _he can’t touch Benji, to touch is to hurt, he can’t_ —and oh, god, Benji is crying and he’s done this, why can’t he stop hurting him?

But then Benji’s mouth is moving, and Ethan struggles to cling to that, because if Benji is talking he ought to listen, should hear whatever he has to say—

“—so sorry,” Benji is saying thickly, “I never would have—I didn’t want to—you were running and I needed you to snap out of it, I thought you would defend yourself at least … stupid …” he trails off.

“Please let me out,” Ethan whispers.

Squeezing his eyes tight shut, Benji presses himself harder against the door and breathes.

Though he keep his eyes wide, Ethan finds himself beginning to match Benji’s breaths.

“I don’t mean to trap you,” Benji says at last, still not opening his eyes. “I just—you have no idea how many times I asked myself over these past months whether I was being possessive, or maybe just a nuisance tracking you down.”

Ethan shakes his head, then stops, hardly knowing what he wants to communicate. Benji shouldn’t have been tracking him, but he’s not supposed to feel guilty, either.

“I wouldn’t—I don’t want to control you, Ethan. If I thought you left because you wanted to be away, for your own sake, I wouldn't have said a word.”

“I do want to be away,” Ethan manages at last, and it’s true, even though through the fog of panic he finds himself drinking in Benji’s every word, every inflection, wondering how he will take another step once he tears himself away yet again. It’s true because Benji might be able to bear being hurt, but Ethan cannot bear hurting him.

“Okay, yeah, but—” Benji opens his eyes at last and raises his head to look directly at Ethan. “Is it because you think you’ll hurt me?”

“Yes.”

Benji nods, looking strangely relieved. “Could we just talk?”

“Where are the others?”

“They don’t know, I promise. I’m not here to drag you anywhere if you don’t choose to go.”

Ethan studies his earnest face, trying not to fixate on the dusky blue of his eyes, and believes him.  “So you searched for me for seven months to. Have a conversation.”

“Yep. Haven’t done much of anything else. And if you run off before we talk, I’ll search that long again and longer.”

“Why?”

Benji tenses visibly. “Last time I told you, you ran away.”

Ethan shakes his head. He’s spent seven months very assiduously _not_ processing those words. He’s not about to start now, with Benji mere feet away.

“No. Why is one conversation so important?”

“Because I don’t want to control you, but I can’t stand by while you destroy your life out of misplaced guilt.”

“Misplaced! Benji—”

“We’ll talk about that later, but yes, misplaced. If it turns out I’m wrong and you’re having a grand old time, I’ll leave you alone. If I’m right and nothing I say changes your mind about coming back, I’ll still leave you alone, because you get to make your own stupid choices. But at least you’ll know how far I’d run for a chance at saving you. At least I’ll have told you that you can’t save me by running away.”

_You can’t save me_. The words strike with more force than Benji’s aborted blow possibly could have, translating to _you’ve failed, you can do nothing._ Benji has wasted six months of his life searching for him, will waste more if he runs. Which means—which means he was wrong. Benji isn’t a danger to himself when Ethan is present. Benji is a danger to himself when Ethan exists.

The tenuous grip he’d found on his breath is slipping, and the fog he’d scarcely begun to slough through thickens.

“I think I’m going to have a panic attack,” Ethan announces distantly, and he only just registers Benji’s, “Can I help, please?” in time to nod, because he sounds like he wants to, and staying away hasn’t worked, so perhaps …

Then everything is a closing throat and _not enough breath_ and _you can’t save me, you can’t save me, you can’t save me_ and a beloved voice and a soft touch.

In the end, the panic attack itself isn't the worst part. It's when his breathing has evened and he finds himself again with a vestige of control, and Benji's hands are on him gently and _they shouldn't be there_ and _god, he never wants to give them up again_. He's shaking, he's afraid, but he's aware. He can make a choice.

And the wave is still coming: _You can't save me, you can't save me_ , and he knows this is it, he knows this is the wave he can't face. And he so desperately wants to run, run and never stop.

But somewhere in the depths of his mind he hears his therapist's words like a whisper: "you can run all your life, you can be a good man, but you'll never have peace unless you learn that you can survive yourself." And Benji is _here_ , he's been running for a year and still he is here, and if Ethan runs now so will Benji, he'll run off with Benji's peace too, and _you cannot save me_.

So Ethan faces the wave. And he stumbles and he loses his footing, but he does not look away as he sees Benji from IT, once doughy and stuttering and untouched by visceral trauma, appearing unaccountably in the van that rescued him from the Russian prison. And Ethan knows that if the IMF wants him out of prison it means the world is exploding, but he somehow finds room for an intense start of fear for Benji, because he can protect the world and Benji as part of it, but if Benji is out here, deliberately putting himself in the worst danger in the field—

Until that moment he hadn't registered how often his mind selects the rambling nerd from IT as the face of the world he has to save.

The images are rolling in quickly now, each hitting like a new blow: Benji’s bloody fingers after they disable the warhead, the tremble in his voice as he reports having killed Wistrom, the nightmares he tries to pass off as a joke. Benji refusing to leave him after the opera, Benji's wide and terrified and brave eyes as he sits with a bomb strapped to his chest, and _oh god_ the scars on his neck after Lane—

Then it’s coming, and all hope of making it through this dies. But no matter.

For the first time since the terrible moment he doesn’t fight as the image approaches, as Benji drops his shield, face tight in anticipation of agony. For the first time he watches with adrenaline-enhanced memory as the tool he grasps in his own two hands parts Benji’s skin.

Eyes snapping open, Ethan all but lunges in the direction of the soft hands still stroking his arms, his back, his hair, because he has to know, has to _feel_ that Benji is here, that the living man is here beside him. 

He only realizes that he’s been crying when he has to dash away tears to see Benji clearly.

“It’s okay Ethan, it’s okay,” Benji is murmuring softly, and gently he captures one of Ethan’s wandering hands and guides it beneath his shirt, flush against his stomach to the place—

Some irrational part of Ethan fully expects to find a still-gaping hole, but instead he finds raised skin, the signifier of pain but also of healing.

Ethan closes his eyes and tries to embed the feeling into his sense-memory, but it isn’t enough. Tentatively Ethan hooks the index finger of his other hand under the shirt and asks, “May I?”

In answer, Benji reaches down and lifts his shirt to just above the scar. 

It is an angry, knotted mass, but in this moment all Ethan can see is the wholeness, the body that fought so hard to heal.

“I’m okay, Ethan,” Benji says. “I’m alive.”

Ethan grabs hold of the three concurrent sensations—sight, touch, hearing—all confirming in no uncertain terms: _he is alive. You did not save him, but he is alive._

Ethan plants the evidence deep in his heart, leans back against the ragged moss-green couch Benji must have led him to in the midst of his panic-attack, and realizes with wonder that the storm has calmed and he, too, is alive.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” Ethan says at last.

Next to him, Benji shrugs. “That’s never been what I wanted of you. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate all the times you have, I’m rather fond of being alive. But I didn’t trail after you all these years like a yapping puppy because I wanted you to save me.”

“Oh. I suppose I should have asked what you wanted.”

“I don’t want to give you further ammunition for your guilt complex. But um, for future reference, yeah, that’d be nice.”

Ethan considers this. “Okay,” he says, turning towards Benji. “What do you want?”

“Like, in general?”

“Right now.”

“Oh, ah, hmm,” Benji dithers. “It might sound silly—and the way this works you’ve got to tell me what you want too, so a ‘no’ from you is very much on the table—but if you are so inclined, I. I want to hold you.”

Ethan hesitates for a moment. Determination so stubborn it has nearly become instinct can’t be erased in a moment, and even allowing Benji to be as close as he already is feels like a violation. 

But in truth, he knew his answer at once.

“Yeah—yeah I—yes please.”

So Benji gathers Ethan into his arms, and Ethan rests.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is folks! A soft ending at last. Thank you to everyone who has followed them all the way there <3

They stay together in the dingy Airbnb for two weeks. It’s the longest Ethan has stayed in any one place for seven months.

Benji updates the others, of course. Ethan smiles at the jubilant texts that flood his phone but doesn’t feel up to answering just yet, so he allows Benji to handle communications.

In the meantime, they move slowly. Ethan trying to recall how to exist around another human without a mask, and Benji keeping every word and motion careful and deliberate, as if any sudden movements might cause Ethan to startle and run.

The fear isn’t entirely unwarranted. Ethan watches Benji’s every move, sees how much stiffer they is, how often his face becomes set and blank the way it does when he’s trying to hide being in pain, the way he presses a hand to his stomach when the temperature drops too low. And every time Ethan catches further evidence of the pain he inflicted the impulse to run rears its head, reduced but still powerful.

But he doesn’t run. Instead he and Benji go on walks, mostly silent, and Benji goes to the market, taking long wide-eyed looks at Ethan before he steps out as if half-convinced it’s the last he’ll ever see of him. But Ethan is there when he returns, and he cooks elaborate meals, and he swats Benji away when he hovers anxiously and asks how he can help every five minutes, and when Benji’s face lights up at the first bite Ethan feels his insides warm in a way he’d nearly forgotten they were capable of.

Other times, Ethan reads while Benji works at his current pet-project, then he asks Benji to tell him about the project and listens intently, even though he understands less than half of what Benji's saying. Ethan does a lot of that—getting Benji to talk. He’s struggling to find his way back to his own words, but Benji seems to understand, and when Ethan prompts him with a question or two he’ll willingly fill the air with rambles about casual nights out with the team or his latest video game or TV obsession.

Only once does Benji break off in the middle of a veritable class session on the relative merits of assorted programming languages and says:

“I don’t mean to push you or anything, but if you ever feel like getting out whatever very loud thoughts you’ve been mulling over these past few days, you know I’m interested, yeah?”

Ethan smiles. “Yeah, I know,” he answers, then hesitates. This seems as good a time as any. “How did you find me? I hardly caught any signs of you looking for me last month.”

Benji’s returning smile is soft and fond. “You got attached.”

Ethan tries to parse this explanation, then shrugs helplessly.

“It was Luther’s idea, actually,” Benji says. “Well, first Jane suggested we slow down for a bit, let you grow complacent and see if we could take you by surprise.”

“Oh,” Ethan breathes, a little astounded that after six months his friends still hadn’t been giving up on him, only shifting their strategy. 

“Only problem was, without being able to _do_ anything I was going off my rocker before the end of the first week. Then Luther pointed out that, however hard you’re trying to disconnect yourself, you’re bloody awful at not getting attached.”

Ethan smiles—Luther wasn’t wrong. He rarely is, when it came to Ethan.

“We had a pretty good idea that you were staying in a 50 mile radius, so I started just sort of. Wandering around. Seeing if maybe you’d cottoned on to someplace and left an impression I could pick up on.”

Ethan’s eyes widen. “Oh—the coffee shop?”

“Got it in one!”

“But I … I always had a mask and a fake name.”

“Of course. Two of the many reasons I didn’t really expect to find anything until I heard a couple baristas talking about their favorite customer’s uncanny ability to sense when the manager is on the way. ”

Ethan feels his face heat. “Favorite customer?”

“Their words, not mine,” Benji grins. “Of course I suspected at once, and when I asked whether this ability disturbed them they were practically falling over themselves to object, telling me how cared for this man makes them feel by looking out for them like that, never letting them get in trouble for talking with him. They also went on about how he's always so careful not to take up their time when they're busy, but when they do have time for conversation he is so attentive and interested in whatever they have to say that they find themselves feeling valued and valuable, regardless of where they're at in their lives. By the time they were done gushing, my only fear was that my desires were manufacturing my absolute certainty that they were talking about you" 

Ethan stares at his hands until Benji’s gentle tone coaxes him to look up.

“You’re a good person, Ethan. No matter where you run, people see it, and care about you. You’re a good person.”

Ethan tries to believe it, and is surprised to discover that he does, a little.

"That all you were thinking about?" Benji asks after a stretch of silence.

"No. I'll tell you more later."

"Sounds good."

* * *

On the eighth day one of their one-sided conversations abruptly reminds Benji of the many times Ethan had promised to watch Star Trek with him, and his eyes grow round with delight as he announces that he’s not about to waste this golden opportunity.

Only a day later they finish season 1 of Star Trek TOS, and Benji wanders from a detailed run-down of season 1’s fraught production to the heated “Kirk vs Picard” debate: “it’s a pity really, they’re both excellent in their own right and there’s no call to make it a competition, but it does get annoying sometimes how Picard always seems to be valued at his worth while Kirk is barraged with groundless accusations. I’d like to blame the Kelvin timeline films for that, the third and best mostly excepted, but the fact is—”

“You know I love you, right?”

Benji blinks, struggling to mentally shift from a universe of space exploration and cardboard aliens to whatever new world Ethan has decided to casually plunge him into.

After a good ten seconds of silent mouth movements, he manages intelligently: "Um?"

"When you broke into my apartment," Ethan says patiently, "You said you love me. And I wanted to make sure you know that I love you."

"Hmm. And by that you mean. Love me as a friend? Maybe love me like a brother, if I'm being optimistic? Because despite the mixed messaging of you running for the hills when I said as much to you, I managed to get the general idea, thanks. 'Preciate you saying it in words though. Thanks."

Ethan frowns. "Oh. Is that the kind of love you meant? I'm sorry if I assumed."

Benji groans and buries his head in his hands. "Nooo," he mumbles, "Just trying to save us the embarrassment. If you insist on hearing it spelled out I meant I was proper, arse-over-tits in love with you and had been for ages."

"I see," Ethan nods gravely, feeling a pang at the past-tense in Benji's declaration but wholly unsurprised. "That's what I'd thought, but please know I have no expectations now. Of course you wouldn't feel the same after I ran from you and stole 6 months of your life. It’s a wonder you still felt it then.”

Benji lifts his head, looking first puzzled then actively annoyed. Ethan isn't sure what to make of that, but these days this much talking amounts to an oration, and he's not sure he'll find his way back to the words if he stops now. So he ploughs forward:

"So like I said I'm telling you how I feel without any expectations. And I'm sorry if it makes you uncomfortable. But I've done enough hiding from you. You deserve to know." Benji is back to gaping, and Ethan adores this about him, the way emotions dance in all-caps across his face. But he looks like he could use an out, so Ethan prompts: "Anyway, my apologies for interrupting. You were saying about Captain Kirk?"

"Captain— _Captain Kirk_?" Benji splutters, "Who the fuck gives a flying fuck about _Captain Kirk_??" Ethan raises his eyebrows, and Benji considers what he just said. "Okay, fair point, I give a lot of fucks about Captain Kirk, but not _right now_ , Ethan!"

"Okay," Ethan replies carefully. "So you want to talk about my being in love with you?"

Benji knocks his head against the back of the couch and closes his eyes. " _Christ_ , Ethan, how can you just _say_ that as if you're just, announcing the morning news?"

Ethan considers the question, finding and assembling the words before he begins. "It's like the sun," he says at last. "My love for you, I mean. It rises with me every morning, it brings definition and color and warmth. It's vital and overwhelming and too much to look at directly, but it's also a basic fact of my existence, far more regular and predictable than the morning news."

During this speech Benji makes so many extravagantly incoherent noises and expressions that Ethan's calm begins to crack, and he suspects that he's doing this all wrong, that maybe he's forgotten how words function and should have waited longer before stringing so many together. But he finds it's difficult to stop now, and he ploughs forward as if with a flood of words he might stumble upon the right ones.

"If I'm honest I thought you were aware, I wouldn't have sprung it on you so suddenly otherwise. But as I said I don't expect anything from you, I understand, nothing has to change—"

"What if I bloody well _want_ it to change?"

"Oh," Ethan whispers, pulling back. "Do you?"

"No no, not like that, I'm not going anywhere, okay? You're not going to ruin that, certainly not with the bloody most obfuscating, matter-of-fact, romantic love confession in infinity and beyond. I just mean—I—" a high pitched giggle escapes between his frenetic words and gestures, and his eyes begin to sparkle as if beginning to settle into the conviction that this reordering of the universe is a very good thing indeed. "I just mean that when I talked about being in love with you in the past tense, I was—I was trying to distance myself, reduce both of our embarrassment a little when you inevitably clarified that you don't mean it like that."

"But I do mean it like that—“

"Yes yes, I've got that _now_ , I just need you to understand. Me too. Still, I mean.”

“Still what?” Ethan asks cautiously, eyes widening.

“Bollocks, we both royally suck at this proper love confession business, don’t we? That’s what this is, to be clear, a love confession. From me. To you, in case you were wondering, which of course you weren’t, unless you thought I was confessing eternal devotion to the lamp. Although on my side I suppose this is more of a love update? Yeah, I’m updating you on the status of my in-loveness. Which is ongoing. I—”

Ethan laughs.

It is a quick, involuntary burst that leaves him startled. It’s the first time he’s laughed in a year.

Benji may not know the extent of it, but to some degree he’s clearly guessed as much, because he breaks off his rambling and lights up with delight. “What was that for?” he asks, looking as pleased with himself as if he’d just disassembles The Apostles single-handed.

“You’re adorable,” Ethan answers. That isn’t exactly it, but he doesn’t yet know how to put words to the well of joy that had burst forth in long-fallow laughter.

“Hey, I was a proper spy!” Benji objects with a very poor attempt at pretending offense, “and a field agent at that!”

Ethan chuckles lightly, and it’s miraculously easy, but then he leans forward until his forehead rests gently against Benji’s, and his voice is grave as he says: “Yes you were. The very best.”

“Are you really just 2,000 percent sincere at all times?” Benji asks, voice pitching high even as he closes his eyes and leans against Ethan. 

Ethan whispers back, “With you? Always.”

* * *

At the end of the second week, they go home.

Benji fusses a little, anxious that Ethan is pushing himself too quickly. 

But Ethan says quietly, “I’ve waited long enough,” and Benji quiets and takes his hand.

After some consultation, they decide to meet Luther, Jane and Brant all at once in Benji’s home. Ethan doesn’t want to face three separate reunions. Or confrontations? Whatever this is going to be.

Ethan is concerned at first about them all arriving to Benji’s place at different times and having to greet them one by one after all, but Benji assures him that he can arrange it so they’re all present before they arrive. “They’ve got their own keys,” he confides, then sighs dramatically. You get yourself run through _one time_ and ‘poof!’ there goes all your privacy.”

Ethan tenses. He knows that making light of heavy burdens is part of how Benji copes with trauma, but. Ethan can’t. Not yet.

Benji must have sensed it, because he wordlessly reaches out and begins carding his fingers through Ethan’s hair. With every passing day Ethan marvels at how easy it now is to reach out and touch without fear of how it will be perceived, and at how magically steadying Benji’s touch is.

* * *

Ethan's heart beats uncomfortably fast as he dithers outside Benji's door. It's not that he's afraid his friends will do anything drastic like send him packing—they’ve stood by him this whole time, after all, and since calling with the news that he'd found Ethan and he wasn't running away again, Benji has repeatedly told Ethan how delighted and relieved they all are.

Still, Ethan had hurt Benji and left them to pick up the pieces of the tragedy, then resisted their above-and-beyond efforts to care for him at every step. Some resentment would be more than justified.

"Hey, Ethan, it's alright," Benji says softly, squeezing the hand he has clasped in his own. "They understand what you've been through. They love you."

"Yeah, I know," Ethan answers, but his voice is unsteady.

Benji looks at him, worrying his lower lip anxiously, then stoops and plants the lightest of light pecks on Ethan's cheek. He pulls back at once, beet red. "Sorry, probably should have asked. Was that alright?"

Ethan feels his own cheeks burning. They haven't kissed, not even like that—Ethan has no doubts about what he wants with Benji, but they're still busy relearning how to exist in one another's space, and neither is in a mental state to be pushing themselves. So by mutual agreement, they've been moving at a comfortably glacial pace.

That's probably a good thing, because at that lightest of brushes that could scarcely be considered romantic in substance, Ethan's heart thuds for an entirely new reason, and a rush of courage and wellbeing swells through him.

"Yeah. Yep. Definitely alright," he announces, then steps boldly through the door. 

* * *

As he enters the living room, Ethan’s step stutters in spite of himself. Three heads turn in unison. Ethan had intended to speak first, to apologize for his actions and thank them for theirs, but now he can’t find the words. Instead he stands and waits for their judgement.

Brandt is putting real effort into looking cross, but a smile is twitching irrepressibly at his tight lips. Ethan’s rather more concerned about Jane, because although she is smiling with undisguised joy, her narrowed eyes suggest that she wouldn’t mind decking him pre- or post-hug.

He can’t quite bring himself to look directly at Luther.

After a few beats of silence Jane elbows Brandt sharply. Having dodge a couple paces away and rolled his eyes at her, he speaks: “I’m glad you’re back, Ethan.”

“Thank you, but it’s okay to be upset—“ Ethan begins, finding it easier to speak now the silence has been broken.

But Brandt interrupts, shaking his head. “I was upset with you for not coming back. Now you have, so case closed.”

“Thank you.”

Jane speaks next. “Well Ethan, you royally fucked up.”

“I know,” Ethan says, failing to keep his voice steady, then watches as she glances in Benji’s direction and her eyebrows shoot up.

“But,” she continues, “I don’t need Benji death-glaring me—which for the record is way scarier than it has any right to be—”

“I know, right??” Ethan commiserates. 

“—to tell you that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. We may have wanted to pummel you once a week this year—”

“—only _once_ a week?” Brandt mutters—

“—but never nearly as much as we wanted you back.”

“Thank you,” Ethan says again, barely managing more than a whisper.

Silence falls, and Ethan tries to ground himself by focusing on Benji’s hand in his, and not on Luther’s silence. He still can’t look at him.

At last it becomes too much. “You are all incredibly generous,” Ethan bursts out, “but I know that I can never make up for what I—”

“Shut up Ethan,” Luther breaks in. His voice is gravelly and breaks on Ethan’s name, and when Ethan finally looks at him in surprise, a few tears have spilled onto his broad face. Luther takes a hesitant step forward. “Are—are hugs okay, or are you not there yet?”

“No! No. Hugs are. They’re good.”

Luther covers the distance in a few quick strides and encloses Ethan in his arms. For a moment Ethan just sinks into the embrace, wondering how he’d survived the worst year of his life without the deep feeling of safety only Luther can bring him. He lifts one arm to return the embrace, unable to bring himself to let go of Benji’s hand to raise the other, but then Benji moves with him so he can cling to Luther fully without letting go. 

Ethan breathes deeply and freely, and without fighting, without shame, he lets the rumble of Luther’s next words sink deep into his soul:

“Welcome home, Ethan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *deep breath* Well, there it is! I realize this is hardly a fic of epic length, but I wrote and posted the first chapter in a 1:00am haze as an angsty one-shot, only to find two and a half months later that it's transformed into the longest story I've ever completed, and the one that covers the most ground emotionally.
> 
> Writing is weird.
> 
> I'm proud of this story and pleased to complete it, but I am going to miss writing it. Thank you, thank you to all of you who have taken the time to read this <33


End file.
